become united with the political power, both of which will be too strong for the people, and will speedily lead to a change in the government. The lessons of the last few years, it would seem, must satisfy all of the danger of concentrated wealth, held together by corporate powers and privileges, and subjected to the control of a few individuals. * Hence it is that in our large cities the daily papers are the organs of the bank aristocracy. The lawyers, especially the most eminent in the cities, are controlled by the same influence. The banks and the merchants are their rich clients, whose long purses are alone able to command the everlastinglyextolled talents of the mercenary advocate. But the lawyers are all politicians, and the mercenary and dishonest among them are subsidized by the banks and the merchants as much in the halls of legislation as in the courts of justice. In the latter case, they are not feed directly, as in the former, but it is their interest to support the selfish and monopolizing schemes of the bank party. They have their retained advocates in the halls of legislation, as well as in the courts. In Congress, Mr. Webster is their senior and ablest attorney and advocate. The bank party, the high tariff party, and all who seek special privileges from the legislation of Congress, look to him with the same confidence they would if they wanted his services in the Supreme Court. (Extract.) REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE LEGISLATURE OF PENNSYLVANIA ON THE SUBJECT OF THE UNITED STATES BANK. * THOSE opposed to it were held in profound ignorance of what was going forward, and finally, on the 19th of January, 1836, a bill (No. 112) was reported in the House of Representatives, by Mr. Stevens, from the Committee on "Inland Navigation and Internal Improvement," entitled, "An Act to repeal the State Tax, and to continue the Improvements of the State by Railroads and Canals, and for other purposes;" which bill, under the popular guise of repealing the State Tax, and continuing and extending the improvements of the state, was in fact a bill to incorporate the stockholders of the Bank of the United States, although the most important part of it was not even referred to in the title. This bill was made the order for the next day after it was reported, and passed the third reading on the 29th of January, 1836. The following day it was presented to the Senate for concurrence, on the 15th of February passed the third reading, and on the 18th of February, 1836, was approved by the Governor, and in due form became a law. Not a single petition had been presented to either House in favour of incorporating the Bank. Strong and repeated expressions of opinion against it had been made by the people at every election when this matter was fairly brought before them. A proposition to take the sense of the people upon it at the election to be held for the choice of members to the Convention, to frame amendments to the constitution, was negatived, Under this peculiar state of things, the passage of this bill was attended with the most vehement burst of indignation on the part of those 1 who had opposed the Bank. Having been introduced and passed in the manner already described, it was honestly believed by many that unfair and corrupt means were employed by the Bank to procure the passage of the bill granting it a charter. This belief was much strengthened by the fact, that, during the pending of the bill before the Legislature, many persons feeling deeply interested in the success of the measure were present in Harrisburg, and in some instances urging the measure with great zeal; and who, by the additional fact that the State Tax thus purporting to be repealed, would have expired in a few days by its own limitation, and that the bonus was distributed among so many different objects, and in so many different parts of the State, as to carry the appearance of attempting to influence the people into a sanction of the measure, by a liberal distribution of its favours. The Bank bill accordingly met with immediate and determined opposition. Large assemblages of the people passed resolutions against it, called for an investigation of the means used to obtain its charter, denounced those who voted for it, and the election last fall mainly turned on that question throughout the State. The result was the decided triumph of those who disapproved the Bank, and called for investigation. MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT JACKSON, DEC. 3RD, 1833. * SINCE the last adjournment of Congress the Secretary of the Treasury has directed the money of the United States to be deposited in certain State Banks designated by him, and he will immediately lay before you his reasons for this direction. I concur with him entirely in the view he has taken of the subject, and some months before the removal I urged upon the Department the propriety of taking that step. The near approach of the day on which the charter will expire, as well as the conduct of the Bank, appeared to me to call for this measure, upon the high considerations of public interest and public duty. The extent of its misconduct, however, although known to be great, was not at that time fully developed by proof. It was not until late in the month of August that I received from the Government Directors an official report, establishing beyond question that this great and powerful institution had been actively engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public officers by means of its money; and that, in violation of the express provisions of its charter, it had, by a formal resolution, placed its funds at the disposition of its President, to be employed in sustaining the political power of the Bank. A copy of this resolution is contained in the report of the Government Directors before referred to; and, however the object may be disguised by cautious language, no one can doubt that this money was, in truth, intended for electioneering purposes, and the particular uses to which it is proved to have been applied abundantly show that it was so understood. Not only was the evidence complete as to the past application of the money and power of the Bank to electioneeering purposes, but that the resolution of the Board of Directors authorized the same course to be pursued in future. * In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented, whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiassed suffrages, or whether the power and money of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions. PRESIDENT JACKSON'S MESSAGE, MARCH 11th, 1834. For, al THE directors of this bank, like all others, are accustomed to sit with closed doors, and do not report their proceedings to any department of the government. The monthly return, which the charter requires to be made to the treasury department, gives nothing more than a general statement of its pecuniary conditions; and of that but an imperfect one. though it shows the amount loaned at the bank and its different branches, it does not show the condition of its debtors, nor the circumstances under which the loans were made. It does not show whether they were, in truth, accommodations granted in the regular and ordinary course of business, upon fair banking principles, or from other motives. Under the name of loans, advances may be made to persons notoriously insolvent, for the most corrupt and improper purposes; and a course of proceeding may be adopted in violation of its charter, while upon the face of its monthly statement everything would appear to be fair and correct. How then is the extensive branches of the government to become acquainted with the official conduct of the public directors, or the abuses practised by the corporation for its private ends, and in violation of its duty to the public? TWENTY-THIRD CONGRESS. FIRST SESSION.-IN SENATE. The re MR. BENTON, Speaking of the notes issued by the branches of the United States bank, said:" They were directed to be received accordingly in all payments to the United States; this gave them currency; in three years, no less than 10,781,635 of them were issued ; how many since was unknown; certainly many millions; they usurped the place of hard money and of notes in the south and west; and now behold the consequence! Here it is," said Mr. B., holding up a little book, entitled Counterfeit Detector;' and in which an account is given of the progress made in counterfeiting this illegal trash. sults to the 15th of December last, are, upon the branch at Pittsburg, eleven editions, or distinct emissions of counterfeits; on the Cincinnati branch, ten editions; on the Nashville branch, thirteen editions; on the Louisville branch, five editions; the Lexington branch, fourteen editions; on the St. Louis branch, four editions; the New Orleans branch, eleven editions; on the Mobile branch, twelve editions; on the Savannah branch, twelve editions; on the Charleston branch, eleven editions; on the Fayetteville branch, fourteen editions; on the Norfolk branch, twenty-four editions; on the Washington City branch, twelve editions; on the Buffalo branch, twenty-six editions; and on other branches an additional number, making the aggregate number of editions, or counterfeits of the United States bank paper, and chiefly these drafts, about two hundred! The quantity of counterfeits contained in each edition it is impossible to ascertain; but any one conversant with the state of the remote circulation will be ready to aver that the mass of it is counterfeit! That every day working-people are de on frauded! That there is no possibility of telling the good from the bad! That the officers of the branches know nothing about it, and accept, or condemn, at random! That confederate gangs of villains traverse the country, with their packages of forged paper, seeking whom they may devour, and presenting a revolting picture of the progress of crime and demoralization on the one hand, and of the suffering of the community on the other, the whole attributable to this circulation of small drafts, signed by innumerable persons, whose names and existence are wholly unknown to that part of the community who are chiefly selected for victims." Extract from a Letter of Mr. Richard Rush. ON THE BANK WITHHOLDING PART OF THE DIVIDENDS DUE ON STOCK TO "Ir this great nation will passively submit to the seizure of its public revenue by a banking company that has made war upon the executive department of its government, its liberties are already gone: it will henceforth be ready to submit to anything which any internal or foreign foe may put upon it. Bank influence will have become so ascendant as to have destroyed the perception of wrong, and all disposition to remedy it. The nation will be bound hand and foot, prostrate and degraded at the feet of money-changers. In the manifest and presumptuous violation of its right, all its just authority, and, with that, its glory, will have been struck down. "To C. C. Waller, Esq." "RICHARD RUSH, "Sydenham, near Philadelphia, "Sept. 6th, 1834. SPEECH OF MR. CALHOUN IN REPLY TO MR. CLAY, ON THE SUB-TREASURY BILL, DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 10TH, 1838. Extracts. "I DELIVERED two speeches in the session of 1833-4, one on the removal of the deposits, and the other on the question of the renewal of the charter of the late bank. I ask the Secretary to turn to the volume lying before him and read the three paragraphs marked in my speech on the deposits. I will thank him to raise his voice and read slowly, so that he may be distinctly heard; and I must ask you, Senators, to give your attentive hearing, for on the coincidence between my opinions then and my course now my vindication against this unprovoked and groundless charge rests. The Secretary then read as follows::- "This was a question of bank or no bank: if it involved the existence of the banking system, it would indeed be a great question-one of the first magnitude; and, with my present impression, long entertained, and daily increasing, I would hesitate, long hesitate, before I would be found under the banner of the system. I have great doubts (if doubts they may be called) as to the soundness and tendency of the whole system in all its modifications. I have great fears that it will be found hostile to liberty and the advance of civilization; fatally hostile to liberty in our country, where the system exists in its worst and most dangerous form. Of all institutions affecting the great question of the distribution of wealth-a question the least explored and the most important of any in the whole range of political economy the banking institution has, if not the greatest, among the greatest, and, I fear, most pernicious, influence on the mode of distribution. Were the question really before us, I would not shun the responsibility, great as it might be, of freely and fully offering my sentiments on these deeply important points; but, as it is, I must content myself with the few remarks which I have thrown out. "You must refuse all connexion with banks. You must neither receive nor pay away bank notes; you must go back to the old system of the strong box, and of gold and silver. If you have a right to receive bank-notes at all-to treat them as money by receiving them in your dues, or paying them away to creditors—you have a right to create a bank. Whatever the government receives and treats as money is money; and, if it be money, then they have the right, under the constitution, to regulate it. Nay, they are bound by a high obligation to adopt the most efficient means, according to the nature of that which they have recognised as money, to give to it the utmost stability and uniformity of value. And if it be in the shape of bank-notes, the most efficient means of giving those qualities is a Bank of the United States, incorporated by Congress. Unless you give the highest practical uniformity to the value of bank-notes -so long as you receive them in your dues, and treat them as moneyyou violate that provision of the constitution which provides that taxation shall be uniform throughout the United States. There is no other alternative. I repeat, you must divorce the government entirely from the banking system, or, if not, you are bound to incorporate a bank as the only safe and efficient means of giving stability and uniformity to the currency. And should the deposits not be restored, and the present illegal and unconstitutional connexion between the executive and the league of banks continue, I shall feel it my duty, if no one else moves, to introduce a measure to prohibit government from receiving or touching bank-notes in any shape whatever, as the only means left of giving safety and stability to the currency, and saving the country from corruption and ruin." "Such were my sentiments, delivered four years since, on the question of the removal of the deposits, and now standing on record; and I now call your attention, Senators, while they are fresh in your minds, and before other extracts are read, to the opinions I then entertained and expressed, in order that you may compare them with those that I have expressed and the course I have pursued on the present occasion. In the first place, I then expressed myself explicitly and decidedly against the banking system, and intimated, in language too strong to be mistaken, that, if the question was then bank or no bank, as it now is, as far as government is concerned, I would not be found on the side of the bank. Now, I ask, I appeal to the candour of all, even the most prejudiced, is there anything in all this contradictory to my present opinions or course? On the contrary, having entertained and expressed these opinions, could. I, at this time, when the issue I then supposed is actually |